The organizations also estimate that "two out of three Americans (65.1% or 143.7 million individuals) volunteered informally by doing favors for and helping out their neighbors, an increase of 9.5 percentage points from last year."

Of course, natural disasters — such as Superstorm Sandy — increase the need for volunteers. So there is something of a flip side to this story.

But as we said, there's more than enough bad news around. Let's focus on the positive for a moment.